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Tony Perkins

Denunciations of today’s court rulings striking down marriage equality bans in Indiana and Utah are beginning to trickle in from anti-gay activists, with the two cases representing additional defeats for an already struggling movement.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council — ignoring the fact that one of the Tenth Circuit Court judges who ruled in favor of marriage equality was recommended by Sen. Jim Inhofe and appointed by George W. Bush — blamed the rulings on the Obama administration and leftists who have been “packing the federal courts with liberal jurists” in order to realize “a radical social agenda.”

Perkins also said that he will represent the “indignant Americans who are tired of seeing the foundations of a free and just society destroyed by a handful of black-robed tyrants.”

While disturbing, today's rulings come as no surprise given the rising disdain for the rule of law promoted by the Obama administration. These latest rulings are not just about redefining marriage but they are a further attempt by the courts to untether our public policies from the democratic process, as well as the anthropological record.

While judges can, by judicial fiat, declare same-sex 'marriage' legal, they will never be able to make it right. The courts, for all their power, can't overturn natural law. What they can do is incite a movement of indignant Americans, who are tired of seeing the foundations of a free and just society destroyed by a handful of black-robed tyrants. The Left has long believed packing the federal courts with liberal jurists is the means of fulfilling a radical social agenda, as the American people refuse to endorse that agenda at the polls or through their elected representatives.

As we saw with Roe v. Wade in 1973 – despite the Left's earnest hopes, the courts do not have the final say. The American people will have the final word as they experience the consequences of marriage redefinition and the ways in which it fundamentally alters America's moral, cultural and political landscape.

Jeff Allen, an Indiana-based pastor and senior editor of BarbWire, called for “elected leaders and Christians [to] defiantly rise up and engage in civil disobedience” to stop this “national tragedy” and “the death of democracy.”

“Each victory for the homosexual activists represents another nail in America’s coffin,” he wrote, adding that “these decisions require that reason be jettisoned in favor of unrestrained deviancy.”

Federal courts in Indiana and Utah on Wednesday blatantly overthrew the will of the people and subversively imposed same-sex “marriage” on the citizens of both states. The judicial oligarchy (tyranny of the few) continues flexing the muscle of its apparently unchecked power. The death of democracy is undeniably upon us. Each victory for the homosexual activists represents another nail in America’s coffin.

According to WLFI.com, a ruling from an elitist U.S. District Judge in Indiana wrongly declared that the prohibition was unconstitutional because it violated guarantees of equal protection and due process.

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Separately, a rogue appeals court ruled 2-1 that Utah’s traditional marriage amendment was unconstitutional as well, saying that the gender of the two persons cannot be considered as a reason to deny a marriage license. And that’s just it — these decisions require that reason be jettisoned in favor of unrestrained deviancy.

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The light of morality and freedom is being brutishly snuffed out right before our very eyes. It’s a national tragedy unfolding at an accelerating pace.

And this is not a good harbinger of things to come — unless our elected leaders and Christians defiantly rise up and engage in civil disobedience.

National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown unsurprisingly accused the judges of “activism” and “sophistry.”

Today's split decision of a panel of judges in the 10th Circuit is not surprising given that this Circuit refused to even order a stay of the district court decision when it came down during the Christmas holidays. While we strongly disagree with the two judges in the majority, we are encouraged by the strong defense of marriage articulated by Justice Paul Kelly in his dissent, and especially his defense of the sovereign right of the people of Utah to decide this issue for themselves. This principled recognition by a federal judge considering the marriage issue underscores that the people of a state are entitled to respect and deference in their desire to promote marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Indeed, the US Supreme Court decided in the Windsor case that the federal government must respect the right of states to define marriage. The majority in the Utah case engage in sophistry to attempt to argue their way around the Supreme Court's ruling that it is up to the states to define marriage. As Justice Kelly noted in his dissent, ‘If the States are the laboratories of democracy, requiring every state to recognize same-gender unions—contrary to the views of its electorate and representatives—turns the notion of a limited national government on its head.'

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The elected representatives of the people of Indiana have decided, for good and proper reasons, to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. It is judicial activism for a single judge to substitute his own views on marriage for the considered opinion of the people's representatives. This is just the latest example of activism from the federal bench, but we fully expect this decision to eventually be reversed when the US Supreme Court upholds the right of states to define marriage as a man and a woman. In the meantime, it is imperative that the state legislature move forward a state constitutional amendment preserving marriage so that the people always remain in control of the definition of marriage in Indiana.

Over the past several weeks, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council hasrelentlesslycriticized the Obama administration’s handling of the imprisonment of Meriam Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman who is married to a U.S. citizen. Ibrahim, a Christian, was put on death row in Sudan for apostasy. She was recently released from jail after an appeals court voided her conviction, but according to reports today she has been rearrested while attempting to leave the country.

It is no surprise that Perkins has used the shocking human rights violation as an excuse to attack the Obama administration, but now even his Republican allies aren’t backing him up on it.

Asked if the State Department was working to help Ibrahim and her children, Meadows reported that the U.S. has in fact worked vigorously behind the scenes to free Ibrahim: “I got off of a call not more than an hour or so ago and a number of agencies across the board are working hand-in-glove to make sure that this is handled quickly and efficiently. And I am heartened by what I heard on that phone call and really encouraged that this is a government that cares about people. Sometimes I wish they would speak up louder and quicker, but I can tell you behind the scenes a number of agencies are working to make sure that they are safe.”

Just minutes later, however, Perkins completely discarded the congressman’s assessment and once again accused the Obama administration of doing little to help secure Ibrahim’s release.

Bizarrely, he cited the case of Abdul Rahman — an Afghan convert to Christianity who faced imprisonment and death threats during the Bush administration — to criticize Obama, saying the president is “not just sympathetic to but I think extremely supportive of these Islamic nations.”

The Family Research Council is once again responding to polls showing widespread support for gay rights by making up their own anti-gay fuzzy math.

In his daily email update on Friday, FRC President Tony Perkins wrote that the Republican House leaders who oppose the Employment Non-Discrimination Act are “more in line with the majority of Americans” than is President Obama, who supports the act.

Perkins cited a Huffington Post poll, which he says found that “only 50% of Americans support an ENDA-type” law, which he claims “gives preference to homosexuals and transgenders in the workplace.”

No wonder the President had to resort to an executive order on special treatment for homosexuals. Turns out, the American people aren’t nearly supportive of his agenda as the media led us to believe. In a Huffington Post poll, only 50% of Americans support an ENDA-type (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) law, which gives preference to homosexuals and transgenders in the workplace. Congress had been reluctant to act on ENDA, and now we see that leaders are more in line with the majority of Americans than the President, which jumped ahead of the legislative branch to impose those rules on federal contractors. So much for the groundswell of support for measures that crush the constitutional freedoms of both employers and employees. Most people apparently think the current anti-discrimination statutes are strong enough.

Perkins conveniently leaves out the fact that the Huffington Post poll found that only 38 percent of respondents opposed ENDA, as opposed to 50 percent who supported it. The poll also found that that a vast majority of Americans support the principle of the the law and think that such protections are already in place:

In the new survey, 50 percent of Americans favored and 38 percent opposed legislation banning job discrimination against gays and lesbians. The poll found political division on the issue: 63 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents favored that kind of legislation, but only 34 percent of Republicans did.

But on at least one major protection the legislation would provide, all three groups were united. Seventy-six percent of Americans, including 88 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of independents and 68 percent of Republicans, said that it should be illegal to fire someone for being gay or lesbian. Only 12 percent of Americans said it should be legal.

The fact that far more Americans agree with the principle than with the legislation may be attributable to a common misconception: Sixty-two percent of Americans think it's already illegal to fire someone for being gay, while only 14 percent of poll respondents said that it's legal. In fact, it is still legal in 29 states to fire someone for being gay.

Majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents all think it's already illegal to fire someone for their sexual orientation.

All were right-wing efforts to literally overthrow President Obama. None of them exactly worked.

In 2012, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins similarly warned of an anti-government uprising if the Supreme Court were to strike down bans on same-sex marriage. “I think that could be the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said, warning that such a ruling would mean “you could have a revolt, a revolution, I think you can see Americans saying ‘enough of this’ and I think it could explode and just break this nation apart.”

In case you thought that was just a one-time gaffe, Perkins maintained a year later that if the government “goes too far” on marriage equality, it would “create revolution” and “literally split this nation in two and create such political and cultural turmoil that I’m not sure we could recover from it.”

That brings us to a poll released today by the Human Rights Campaign and conducted by Alex Lundry, who served as Mitt Romney’s data director in 2012. Respondents to the poll were read Perkins’ “revolution” remarks verbatim. Unsurprisingly, only a tiny handful agreed with him, and even most opponents of marriage equality didn’t buy into his idea of an anti-gay revolution.

Conducting his poll at the beginning of June, Lundry didn’t find much support for that kind of revolt when the quote was read to respondents, with 59 percent overall disagreeing with Perkins. Of people who said they were opposed to gay marriage, 58 percent said they wouldn’t do anything, despite disagreeing and being disappointed in the decision.

“Only one directly mentions the word ‘revolution,’ five voters threaten to leave the country, and a scant fifteen people (3% of opponents) mention any form of protest,” reads a prepared polling memo. “Clearly, there is no real threat of widespread calamity should we extend the freedom to marry to gays and lesbians.”

Support for gay marriage is at 56 percent, with 37 percent opposed, squaring with public polls. Asked to rate the degree of their support, 44 percent said they “strongly” support legalization, with only 28 percent opposed.

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Those feelings are reflected in some of the other answers to the survey: 74 percent of people said their lives wouldn’t change with legalized gay marriage, and among those who did foresee a change, many rated it as one that would be for the better.

Four years after he lost his unhingedcampaign to block the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins is now expressing dismay that the U.S. military color guard marched in the Washington, D.C., LGBT Pride Parade “alongside half-naked people and drag queens.”

Perkins claimed in his radio bulletin today that the color guard’s decision to march discriminates against Christians because uniformed soldiers didn’t participate in the March for Life.

The problem in D.C.'s gay pride parade wasn't that active duty troops were saluting the flag. The problem was which flag they were saluting. Hello, I'm Tony Perkins with the Family Research Council in Washington. March madness isn't just for basketball! After last week's gay pride parade, it applies to the Obama administration too. For the first time ever, the President authorized an eight-member military honor guard to march alongside half-naked people and drag queens. The move, which Capital Pride Parade called "significant," caps off years of being denied by the prestigious soldiers. Making matter worse, this color guard was provided by the U.S. Military District of Washington, which is reserved for the President, Congress, and other state functions. And while the Pentagon may be willing to bend the rules for this cause, you can bet Christian soldiers wouldn't enjoy the same "exemption" if they wore their uniforms to the March for Life. Unfortunately for today's troops -- "equality" is a one-way street, and that street is full of activists.

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

Religious Right activists claimed this week that they are losing their “right” to not see gay people, even going so far as to compare their situation to the Holocaust.

5) It Ain’t Easy Being Straight

American Family Association president Tim Wildmon thinks straight people have it rough in America. In an email to the AFA’s members this week, Wildmon complained that heterosexuals are being pushed into the closet and forced to watch gay people kiss “mouth to mouth” on TV.

“Straight America is scared to death of offending or potentially offending gay, lesbian and transgender people and their powerful movement. It’s really embarrassing to watch,” he wrote, objecting especially to “Michael Sam’s mouth to mouth kiss of his lover on EPSN [sic].” Wildmon insisted that while he was grossed out by the kiss, he felt pressured by the media to enjoy it:

Sam and his boyfriend, Vito Cammisano, decided to go "in your face," both to themselves (literally) and to those watching the draft on television including millions of young boys no doubt. After first kissing without debris, Sam then decided to put some cake in his mouth and go back after Vito for some more affection.

It was gross. But then I'm an old-school prude who doesn't believe men should be having sex with other men, so that is the reaction you would expect from people like me. I believe that kind of behavior is immoral, unhealthy and unnatural. If people want to live this lifestyle, that is their choice, but this idea of forcing people who disagree with it to applaud or else be shouted down, fined by the government or lose your job has gotten way out of hand.

“Now it is clear the sports world is also bowing the knee to GLBTQ,” he added. “We must get more Christians to wake up and fight back or we will lose our country” to public displays of “man-to-man mouth kissing.”

4) Gays Taking Away Freedom By Celebrating Pride Month

On a similar note, Linda Harvey of Mission America said this week that LGBT Pride Month celebrations have violated her freedom. She didn’t say which freedoms she lost exactly, but she definitely felt oppressed!

“Such conduct is nothing to be proud of,” she wrote in WorldNetDaily. “Their alleged freedom means loss of liberty for you and me.”

Harvey, who wants the government to ban such celebrations from taking place, warns that “this movement is causing collateral damage in America. Are we willing to open our eyes and see where this is going? More pride means less freedom for Christians. That means loss of virtue and a farewell to America’s soul. Isn’t it time for America to stop the parade?”

In an appearance on the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” yesterday, Sen. Jim Inhofe deliberated whether President Obama is a terrorist supporter or a buffoon, and decided that he president is intentionally “supporting the enemy.”

“Never in my political career in my memory did it ever occur to me that we would have a president of the United States who would be doing things supporting the enemy,” the Oklahoma Republican said. “Our system isn’t set up for Congress to deal with this kind of a situation.”

Inhofe told FRC president Tony Perkins that he is even comfortable leaking information from classified briefings: “All of these hearings, these classified briefings like the one we had this morning, I almost don’t mind talking about what they said because they are all so orchestrated, they always have five or six people from the administration, all of them agreeing with the president.”

“People now are calling in on a regular basis and saying, you know what I knew this administration was incompetent but I believe this goes beyond incompetence, I believe some of it’s intentional, either they are working intentionally to undermine America or they simply have no clue whatsoever,” Perkins said.

Inhofe suggested that he agrees with Perkins that Obama is deliberately harming America.

“If I were to agree with that, I’d lose all credibility in going on because that is the first thing they’d accuse me of,” Inhofe responded. “But I’d have to tell you, those people have every reason to believe what they are believing now. This couldn’t just keep happening over and over again.”

Yesterday on his radio program, “Washington Watch,” FRC president Tony Perkins denounced the embassy’s decision.

“The rainbow flag over Israel — the last time they were flying that over Sodom and Gomorrah it didn’t work out so well,” Perkins said. “This administration is not just ignoring or indifferent to traditional values, it is hostile to them, it is hostile to the very things that made America great.”

Perkinbs also spoke to a caller who said President Obama is “Satan personified” and a “terrorist” who “threatened” House Speaker John Boehner “and his family” to keep him in check.

Perkins kept the allegation alive, telling the caller that “there could be something to that, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s come to that” while noting that “this president and his policies” have “dismantled the country morally and culturally.”

Perry is far from the only Republican figure to have expressed this view.

Another former GOP presidential candidate who is also considering a second run, Gov. Mike Huckabee, likened homosexuality to alcoholism in a 2009 interview with Esquire:

Huckabee says he doesn't know if homosexuality is inborn, but he believes you can control the behavior. He compares homosexuality to obesity or alcoholism: "Some people have a predisposition to alcoholism. Does that mean they're not responsible for getting drunk? No."

On his “Washington Watch” radio program yesterday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins read a letter from a listener, Todd, who warned that President Obama is attempting a “hostile government takeover” that would cancel the 2016 presidential election.

Tony Perkins’ invocation of the Holocaust in his statement referring to a judge’s finding that a baker unlawfully discriminated against gay customers is offensive and inappropriate.

There is no comparison between contemporary American political issues and the actions of Hitler’s regime during the Holocaust. Such inappropriate analogies only serve to trivialize the Holocaust and are deeply offensive to Jews and other survivors, as well as those Americans who fought valiantly against the Nazis in World War II.

We urge Perkins to apologize and to refrain from using Holocaust imagery to make his point.

In recent weeks, the Religious Right has caught wind of a “pastoral letter” from Planned Parenthood’s clergy advocacy group that has been posted on the organization’s website for several months and states, “The decision about abortion is a matter between a woman, her conscience, and/or her God, and that those close to her should offer support in any way they can.”

In a statement to Time yesterday, members of the Planned Parenthood clergy board responded to Perkins, saying, “Too often, the voices of negative religious discourse around abortion are those that loudly proclaim their teachings are the only ones that are valid. They try to shame and judge women who are making deeply personal and often complex decisions about their pregnancies.”

To which Perkins, of course, responded by implying that Christians who support reproductive rights are just “supposed” Christians, who “do not fully understand” the issue of abortion rights.

Three clergy board members—the Board’s chair, Reform Jewish Rabbi Jon Adland of Canton, Ohio; vice-chair Rev. Susan Russell, of All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena, Calif.; and Reform Jewish Rabbi Dennis Ross of Concerned Clergy for Choice in Albany, N.Y.—responded to Perkins’ criticism against their work in a statement to TIME. “Too often, the voices of negative religious discourse around abortion are those that loudly proclaim their teachings are the only ones that are valid,” they say. “They try to shame and judge women who are making deeply personal and often complex decisions about their pregnancies.”

For these Christian and Jewish leaders, their efforts far from spiritualize abortion–they defend a woman’s religious liberty. “As clergy members, we work every day to make clear that everyone is entitled to follow their own conscience and religious beliefs; what they don’t have the right to do is impose those beliefs on everyone else,” they say.

As ministers, they also believe they also have a spiritual responsibility to care for and counsel families in their communities. “As faith leaders, we recognize that women need to be supported and receive compassionate care while making deeply personal decisions based on faith and conscience,” they say. “It is important that women know that there are people of faith who respect a woman’s ability to make these deeply personal decisions in consultation with her family, her doctor, and her faith.”

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Perkins, however, suggests that Christianity and Planned Parenthood are incompatible. “A straightforward reading of the Bible shows that since the beginning God held human life to be sacred, and values human life, no matter the stage,” Perkins says. “I imagine that Christians, supposed or true, who support Planned Parenthood either do not fully understand what abortion is, what its physical and emotional consequences are or what Planned Parenthood as an organization actually stands for and advocates.”

During his “Washington Watch” radio program, Perkins fielded a question from a caller, Daniel, who said that “President Obama and Eric Holder act like they are radical Muslims in the fact that everything they’ve done in not going after the people in Benghazi, releasing the five terrorists, on and on and on, it just makes you think he’s a Muslim terrorist.”

“Daniel, it raises questions for me,” Perkins responded, accusing the Obama administration of failing to help a Sudanese woman who was jailed for converting to Christianity.

“To Daniel’s point you have to wonder, why, why are they so soft, in not wanting to make reference to Islam and terrorism?” he continued. “I don’t know. I don’t know the answer. I just know it’s troubling, it’s problematic. Is it driven by political correctness? What is it? I don’t know the answer, Daniel, but there’s clearly something wrong.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins is urging parents across the country to pull their children out of public schools in response to a Washington, D.C., principal’s decision to come out to his students and school staff.

The principal of Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington D.C. publicly announced that he is gay at a Pride Day event yesterday, thanking students and community members for their support.

Perkins was of course appalled, urging his Washington Watch listeners yesterday to pull their kids from public schools: “If you have your children in the public schools, unless you’re in a district where you know exactly what’s going on in some rural part of the country where values are still embraced, you really need to think about whether or not you want to expose your kids to what’s happening in our public school system. I would encourage you to look for other alternatives.”

“Eighty-three percent of the students coming out of the District of Columbia are not proficient in reading skills, but they know how to celebrate gay pride,” Perkins said. “As we drop further and further in the global ranking of math and science scores, at least our kids will understand sex-ed. Amazing.”

After Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission unanimously upheld a judge’s finding that a baker unlawfully discriminated against gay customers, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins invited the baker’s attorney, Nicolle Martin of Alliance Defending Freedom, to discuss the case yesterday on “Washington Watch.”

Perkins reacted to the discrimination case by offering a comparison to the Holocaust: “I’m beginning to think, are re-education camps next? When are they going to start rolling out the boxcars to start hauling off Christians?”

“I guarantee that we are going to continue to see the witch hunt,” Martin said.

Bryan Fischer flatly declares that "Bowe Bergdahl deserves to die for what he has done."

Tony Perkins is a class act: "Taxpayer-funded sex changes: They aren't just for traitors and illegal immigrants anymore!"

Rob Schenck calls on Evangelical leaders to speak out against gun violence, saying "while I appreciate so much of what the NRA has done historically, it is not playing a constructive role in this situation."

Gordon Klingenschmitt says that everyone remembers "when those terrorists from Afghanistan" carried out the 9/11 attacks. We'd like to point out that none of the hijackers were from Afghanistan.

Finally, Focus on the Family's Glenn Stanton says that gay relationships are not at all like straight relationships: "[I]t is difficult to say with honesty that serious gay and lesbian relationships are just like heterosexual relationships."

With right-wing opposition to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) becoming increasingly unhinged, it was no surprise that Family Research Council president Tony Perkins warned members in an email today that ENDA would destroy businesses, entire communities, and the First Amendment.

Perkins writes that ENDA, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to current non-discrimination protections such as race, religion, gender and disability, would “banish” Christians from society and have them “stripped of their livelihood” while turning America into Nazi Germany.

They're pushing ENDA again -- the Employment Non-Discrimination Act -- which would strip Americans of their religious liberties. No longer will an employer be able to make employment decisions based on what qualities or characteristics are most relevant to a particular job. Instead, ENDA will grant special rights and privileges, special power over an employer's religious convictions, to an entire group of people -- simply because of their preference for a certain type of sexual activity.

This is the most perverse distortion of the Constitution of the United States imaginable. And is more likely to impact you personally than ever before. Because ENDA is the federal government forcing a pro-homosexual point of view upon the entire (supposedly "free") marketplace.

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You enjoy working in a Christian-owned business, for example. It's a great place to work, a good family-friendly environment. If your company does any work with the federal government, or if you're a subcontractor to a business holding a federal contract, you could suddenly find that your company's policies, if they reflect biblical views and values, are considered a violation -- and the company could lose that contract. Company revenues plummet. People get laid off. Maybe the company has to close its doors altogether and you are out of work.

As businesses are boarded up, whole communities will be affected. But the powerful anti-Christian lobby will dust off their hands: mission accomplished.

ENDA takes the chilling concept of "Big Brother" one diabolical step further . . . to "Big Bully." The federal government becomes the "enforcer" for liberal activists, driving anyone with a traditional view of natural marriage into the shadows ... because of the threat of a federal lawsuit.

You no longer enjoy freedom of speech, freedom of religion, or freedom of association. The First Amendment is dead to you -- because of your biblical views on the sin of homosexuality.

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If the federal government can coerce you to comply with its views . . . cooperate with its policies . . . contribute to its plans for the transformation of America . . .

. . . well, sadly, this looks more and more like totalitarianism. We only have to look back to 1930 in Germany, or the USSR in the 1950s, to see what happens when leaders impose a totalitarian state on the people.

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They are pushing for America to conform to their ideology. Freedom of speech and religion have no place in their vision. We can't let it happen.

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. . . then anyone in America can be targeted ... called out ... pilloried in the public square . . . stripped of their livelihood ... branded as a "bigot" and banished from "society."

It was largely off their radar, that is, until this week. This morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on a proposal by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., to send a constitutional amendment to the states restoring to Congress and state governments the ability to regulate the raising and spending of money in elections. In response, Republican politicians and conservative activists have kicked into gear and are starting to try out new talking points to get their movement to oppose efforts to lessen the influence of big money in politics.

Burchfield and McGahn both argued that the introduction of the constitutional amendment means, in the words of McGahn, that campaign finance law advocates are “admitting” that campaign finance regulations are “unconstitutional.”

On the surface, this is the opposition’s strongest argument, because it sounds so scary. But it’s just not true. Whether you support the Udall amendment or not, it’s dishonest to suggest that it would amount to a “repeal of the First Amendment.” Instead, proponents argue that it strengthens the First Amendment by undoing the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence declaring that spending on elections, including from corporate treasuries, cannot be limited. Proponents of the Udall amendment hold that this jurisprudence, including recent decisions in the Citizens United and McCutcheon cases, represented a radical reinterpretation of the First Amendment; undoing them would simply re-establish the ability of Congress and the states to set reasonable regulations on the raising and spending of money to influence elections.

The Heritage panelists repeatedly claimed that the Udall amendment is an attempt to protect incumbency by preventing challengers from raising enough money to win elections. McGahn insisted that it was an effort by Democratic incumbents “desperately clinging to power.”

“They want to change the rules of the game and prevent people from criticizing them, not unlike England did before our revolution, and which led to our revolution,” he added.

The American Family Association’s Sandy Rios also invoked the American Revolution in an interview with von Spakovsky yesterday, saying, “The First Amendment, the rights to free speech – particularly the right to political speech – were the right to criticize the king, criticize the authorities over you.”

In a later interview with Rios, Tea Party Patriots spokesman Scott Hogenson even managed to connect the Udall amendment with immigration reform, claiming that both are part of a “larger, concerted effort to maintain the Democratic Party’s control of American politics and eventually move to one-party rule.”

In reality, it’s unlimited campaign spending that tends to be a boon for incumbents, who on average are able to raise far more than challengers. For instance, in Texas, a state with few campaign finance limits, incumbents who win on average raise more than twelve times the average amount raised by challengers. By contrast, in Colorado, which has relatively low individual contribution limits, incumbents on average raise less than three times what challengers are able to raise [pdf].

Von Spakovsky also played up conservative conspiracy theories about the “liberal media,” telling Rios, “No surprise, there’s a glaring exception in this proposed amendment for the press. And that means that MSNBC or the New York Times Company, which are big corporations, they could spend as much newsprint or airtime as they wanted going after and criticizing candidates or talking about political issues.”

These arguments fail to recognize one key distinction, which is that there is a difference between the New York Times publishing an editorial (which would be protected under the proposed amendment, as it is now) and the corporate managers of the New York Times taking $50 million out of their corporate treasury to buy ads to influence an election (which would not be protected).

It’s no coincidence that Cruz rolled out his criticism of the Udall proposal at a pastors’ event organized by the Family Research Council, a main theme of which was the supposed assault on the religious liberty of Christians in America. Cruz told the pastors that the Udall measure would “muzzle” clergy and was being proposed because “they don’t like it when pastors in their community stand up and speak the truth.”

Likewise, McGahn said at the Heritage event that the amendment would endanger the religious liberty of clergy: “What about pastors and churches? This is an issue that comes up once in a while. Can the government get in there and tell a priest he can’t talk to his congregation because it may somehow have something to do with politics?”

This might be true if the proposal would, in fact, “repeal the First Amendment.” In fact, the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty would remain in place.

Along with comparisons to British control before the American Revolution, amendment opponents are trying to link the Udall proposal to the 18th century Alien & Sedition Acts.

In his interview with Rios yesterday, van Spakovsky claimed that “the last time Congress tried to do something like this was when they passed the Alien & Sedition Act in 1798 that criminalized criticism of the government.” Multiple GOP senators at today’s hearing, including Judiciary Committeee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, repeated the talking point.

Of course, the amendment does nothing to reduce the right of individuals to criticize the government or politicians.

6. The polls are skewed!

When an audience member at yesterday’s Heritage Foundation panel asked about polls showing overwhelming opposition to the Citizens United decision, McGahn replied that the questions in the polls were “skewed.”

You can judge for yourself whether this question from a recent Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll – which found 80 percent opposition to the Citizens United decision – is “skewed” on behalf of campaign finance law proponents:

In one of the least self-aware moments we’ve witnessed in the last few days, McGahn told the Heritage audience that campaign finance reform proponents could have just worked for tougher disclosure requirements, which the Supreme Court’s majority has consistently endorsed as a way to prevent corruption:

What’s interesting is the courts have upheld some disclosure of independent speech, which six months ago was supposed to be the answer, a year ago was supposed to be the answer – remember the DISCLOSE Act, Part 1 and Part 2? Well, that was supposed to cure all the ills in our democracy, but unfortunately I guess they’ve given up on that and they’ve moved to the more radical change, which is the constitutional amendment.

Speaking to the Heritage audience, Burchfield presented the curious argument that the Udall amendment would demand to "equalize debate among the haves and have-nots,” and since “the portion is small” of “those with limited means” who participate in electoral debates, this would require “severe restrictions.”

The rich do not advocate a single viewpoint. Think of Sheldon Adelson and George Soros, they don’t agree on anything. There are strong voices on the left and on the right, not just in privately funded campaign advertisements, but also in the broadcast and print media. Only a small portion of those with significant resources even bother to participate in the debate. And among those with limited means, the portion is small indeed. In order to equalize debate among the haves and the have-nots, severe restrictions would be necessary. The quantity and quality of discourse would certainly suffer.

The amendment under consideration doesn’t require that everybody be heard an equal amount; instead, it gives Congress and the states the ability to create a more even platform for those who wish to be heard, regardless of their financial means.

Hogenson told Rios that the Udall amendment is “just taken right out of Saul Alinksy’s book, ‘Rules for Radicals,’ it just makes up a gigantic lie and perpetuates it, that somehow democracy needs to be restored.”

Von Spakovsky also invoked Alinsky in his interview with Rios, claiming that criticism of the enormous political spending of the Koch brothers is an Alinskyite plot: “What’s really going on here is, look, if you look at Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals,’ one of the rules that he sets out is you pick a villain and you basically blame those villains for all of the problems. It’s a way of distracting the public, it’s a way of diverting attention, and that’s exactly what Harry Reid and the Democrats are doing here.”

Speaking on his radio program, “Washington Watch,” Perkins chastised Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer — who Perkins said “thinks he understands freedom better than America’s Bill of Rights” — and Mark Udall for opposing the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision.

“The National Archives will need more than bombproofing to protect America’s founding documents,” he warned. Perkins then invited Sen. Pat Roberts onto the show to discuss the proposed amendment.

The Kansas Republican thanked Perkins for not only defending Citizens United but also bringing attention to the imprisonment of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman married to an American who is in jail in Sudan for converting to Christianity. Perkins replied that the two cases are actually related: “The two of them are very connected. In our First Amendment we have our freedom of religion and freedom of speech and we keep our freedom of religion by working to keep our freedom of speech, and political speech is actually what’s under attack here.”

Roberts accused Senate Democrats of trying to “restrict the free speech of those who simply disagree with them.”

Later, Roberts said supporters of a constitutional amendment like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seek to “regulate free speech so they can silence their critics and retain their hold on power.”